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Thing 3: More about blogging

How might a blog improve teaching and learning? How would you feel about blogging with your students or colleagues? What concerns do you have about educational blogging?

I can see two ways immediately, even in first grade.

A class "newspaper". We could publish weekend news, what we are studying and doing in school. I think that the idea that parents could inter-act with it and make comments would be amazing for the students. I think it would drive their writing forward if they were "publishing on the internet".

Have the kids track and comment on the books they read.I think that introducing them to information sharing and the safety issues involved around that sharing at this age is as or more important than the "what happens when a stranger approaches you on the street" talks.

The concerns I have, besides the obvious creepy people ones, are mainly ones of time and management. We have schedules so tightly structured and packed with out even thought of time to transition between things that I am not sure when time could be allotted......although it could be a center during reading block.....type in word for review, teacher cuts and pastes into the blog......by jove, this could work!

Comments

Good ideas, Skip. I like the connection to literacy. As kids get older, they become so used to shopping on iTunes and Amazon, it would be nice to use the blog to post book reviews. You may even see some back and forth about whether kids like certain books. (Boys may have some opinions about Pinkalicious, for example!)

I agree with you Skip that if the children knew that they would be "publishing" on the internet it would provide motivation to some of the relcutant writers. I am slao concerned with the "creepy" people out there, but there are ways in which we can protcet our children.

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